A Love Affair with China: Amy Tan and Linda Jaivin

Both Amy Tan and Linda Jaivin write – in their latest novels – about women, power, sex, translation and moving between cultures. Both deal with social transformation, rebellion and identity. China’s past is at stake in both Amy Tan’s Valley of Amazement and Linda Jaivin’s The Empress Lover.

And yet they also inhabit different Chinas.

In this wide-ranging conversation at the Sydney Writers Festival, with RN's Kate Evans, there are cities and ghostly walls, politics and drama, mothers and memory.